Hey everyone.
I want to build some fairly large rock piles to have near a rock crusher. I know that building an irregularly shaped cone on which to glue correctly scaled rocks would be the general idea but would really like to see an article or video about it. With all of the quarries out there that people must have on layouts, I was surprised I couldn’t find anything about build larger rock piles when I did a search (lot’s on crafting rock faces or retaining walls - but no rock piles). If anyone can point me to an article or video on this, I’d appreciate it.
Thanks,
Dan
Maybe not what you’re looking for, but used Arizona Rock & Mineral rock products to resemble shoreline rip-rap. Regards, Peter
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Gidday Dan, it was forty + years ago, and being on the sou’west side of the Pacific, practices may vary, but when I drove a dump truck (part time) in a quarry, we were loaded the “blasted rock” straight from the quarry floor and then tipping directly into the crusher. The only piles were the varying dimensions of stones/aggerate.
Cheers, the Bear. 
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My advice is to do a little research on your desired ‘pile’ material to determine its ‘angle of repose’. Then build your ‘core’ so its surfaces are that steep.
Make sure you have sensible arrangements (or a cover story ready) for how the material got into the pile, and sensible arrangements for how material is removed from the pile for use or delivery.
In some cases the pile may be covered to protect it from weather, and given effective drainage.
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I found these links. Maybe they’ll help get you in the right direction.
Do you remember what size you used? Also, is there any rule of thumb to calculate how much to buy? They have a bag that is 12 oz and another that is 7 lbs. I am planning a quarry scene and this looks better than the WS talus.
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Ex OTR driver that hauled aggregate aka sand and rock for the bossman a few times. Rocks are sorted by size coming out of the crusher. You have 3+ 2+ 11/2, 1, 3/4 ,1/2 then fines and dust. All sizes listed are in inches. The biggest rocks are sent back through a secondary crusher to make the smallest gravel. Large rip rap boulders are dug out or blasted out in that size and yes the blasting techs they have can make their explosives do what they want.
Thanks for the suggestions guys. I like the bag of scale rocks pictured. Will look into those to find out if those are still around or something similar is available.
Making the “cone” bases for the rock shouldn’t be too tough. Then, for some of the rock, I plan on going to our local retail supplier of landscape rock and getting a 5 gal. bucket of their smallest crushed rock (gravel) and then running it through some screen material to filter it down to the sizes I want. That will likely give me way more than l’ll need but having some leftover bags of different sized rocks will come in handy down the line.
I have been using real dirt and gravel, rocks etc. I will start with a sculpted piece of foam then cover with white glue and apply my covering.
So, what I finally did was purchase a five gallon bucket of 3/8 minus gravel from a local landscape supplier, washed a couple of cottage cheese sized containers of it and then after it dried sifted it down into progressively smaller sizes.
I then carved pink foam bases and applied foam friendly adhesive with a caulk gun onto those and then poured the desired size of sifted rock onto it, pressing the rock a bit into the adhesive (wear latex gloves). After the first application of affixed rock dried, I brushed white glue on the bare spots, or where I wanted different sized rocks, and added those. This last part took a bit of fussing and fixing until I had the look I was satisfied with.
I am quite pleased with the final look. Here are some photos of the results.
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That looks great
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Nice!
Regards, Chris
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